An Analysis on the Pursuit of Happiness in The Lord of the Rings

Abstract

Since The Lord of the Rings was adapted by Peter Jackson into trilogy film in 2001-03, it has astounded its critics and gratified its fans and students. Many critical journals or graduation papers have also talked about this massive novel. After doing a lot of reading concerning these reviews, it’s clear that most of them analyze this work using psychoanalytical criticism; myth and archetypal criticism; cultural studies, and recently ecocriticism. Among these theories, psychoanalytic interpretation mainly focuses on Freud’s key ideas, namely the id; ego; and superego. According to Freud’s theory that: “Psychoanalytic literary criticism is not simply about interpreting a text’s protagonists. It also seeks to relate the text to the mind of its author.”(Berg, 2003, p.84). In this circumstance, this paper will probably dig some new insights by using this theory. The paper will follow the protagonist’s inner mind through employing Freud’s some key ideas, such as repression and projection. Based upon psychoanalytic analysis of the protagonists, this paper tries to argue that the three Hobbits can acquire happiness as long as they deal properly with the relationship between themselves and the society. In other words, common people can also push the wheel of history as long as they code well with themselves and the society.